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# LIBRARY OFi CONGRESS.! 



I UNITED STATES Ui AMERICA. f 



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DARWINISM AND THEOLOGY, 



BY 



EDWARD FRY, Q.C. 



REPRINTED WITH SLIGHT ALTERATIONS PROM THE ' SPECTATOR' 
O* THE 

7th, 14th, and 21sx SEPTEMBER, 1872. 



LONDON : A 
HENRY SOTHERAN and CO., 

136, STRAND, 36, PICCADILLY, and 10, LITTLE TOWER STREET 

1872. 



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TEINTED BY TAYLOE AND CO., 
UTILE (JT7EEN STEEET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. 



DARWINISM AND THEOLOGY 



To the Editor of the ' Spectator/ 

Sir, 

Now that Parliament is closed, the Treaty saved, and 
Livingstone discovered, you may perhaps find space for 
some observations on a subject of a less exciting charac- 
ter, the relations between those views of the production 
of plants and animals which are popularly understood by 
the word Darwinism, and Theology, the doctrine of the 
existence and activity of a Divine Author of the world. 

There can be no doubt that in many irreligious minds 
the writings of Mr. Darwin have created a fervour of 
delight ; that in many religious minds they have created 
anxiety and distress. On the one side are to be found 
men such as those who have written of man as made in 
the image of an ape, and have sought to elevate into a 
science the supposed failures of nature ; on the other, are 
to be found good men and women who wince under the 
notion that plants and animals were not created by the 
Almighty fiat just as we see them now, and shrink with 
dread from every theory which in anywise shows us to be 
of kin with the lower animals. 

The time of twilight is always a time of vague alarms ; 
then the gnarled trunk or the bare bough of the well- 
known tree becomes a goblin to the fancy ; then beyond all 
other times the saying of Epictetus is true, that the mind 
of man is harassed not by things, but by notions about 



4 



things. And Darwinism is essentially a region of twi- 
light j here and there splendid gleams of light, elsewhere 
darkness and half-light ; and so men's fancies and men's 
fears are very busy there. My object in the present 
paper is to get a little nearer to these hobgoblins, and 
to try to make out whether they are so dangerous ; and 
I think that there will be no inconsiderable gain in the 
mere effort to express these objections which are more 
often felt than uttered with anything of precision ; for 
this will, I think, be found to show, first, that many of 
these objections are rather of feeling than of reason ; 
and secondly, that many (if not all) of them are nothing 
new in substance, but only novel and so more striking 
expressions of old and well-worn difficulties. I have no 
intention in this letter of entering upon a critical 
examination of Mr. Darwin's writings, but I shall try 
and lay hold of the objections to them as they float about 
in the minds of good people, many of whom have never 
opened a volume of our great naturalist. I have equally 
no intention of discussing the truth or the falsehood of 
Mr. Darwin's views. I shall assume their truth, and 
shall inquire whether, supposing them to be true, they 
do in fact introduce any new difficulty in the way of the 
theocratic conception of the universe. 

Before entering on this special inquiry, let me observe 
that any appreciated change in physical science produces 
pain in many religious minds. This results from the 
association of ideas. A devout man believes, let us say, 
that the sun goes round the earth, and this notion he 
associates with the idea of the creative power and the 
beneficent designs of God, and he praises God for the 
sun that so goes round the earth. The two notions get by 
habit and want of discriminating self-reflection welded 



5 



into a composite whole ; and to shake one part of this 
entire structure seems to such a mind to be shaking 
every part. " If the sun do not go round the earth, 
how can I bless God for it, as I have done all my life ? 
Where is that Divine care for man which has hitherto 
consoled me ? " 

Just in the same way, a large body of devout thoughts 
and feelings has clustered in many religious minds round 
the popular notions of creation, and above all, of the 
creation of man ; and these notions cannot be shaken, as 
they have roughly been of late, without shaking too 
those feelings which hang around them ; and hence in- 
evitably, sorrow and pain have resulted to such minds 
from Darwinism. 

But they may find consolation and encouragement 
from the past ; for surely it is true that each certain 
step in physical science has only raised and enlarged our 
conceptions of the Divine majesty and power. Who, 
from a merely devotional interest, would go back to that 
old astronomy, which prevailed before the spirit of 
modern science arose ? Whether of these two views is 
more calculated to excite our devotion and praise, — the 
notion that the heavens are a solid sphere, moving round 
the earth, with little holes to let through the light ; or 
the conception of boundless regions of space, with stars 
infinite in number, more and more revealed as our powers 
of sight are enlarged, and each star a system of perfect 
order and marvellous complexity ? Science begins with 
human guesses, and approaches towards Divine thoughts : 
and the contrast between earlier and later conceptions is 
therefore only a proof that Grod's thoughts are not as ours 
but His ways are higher than our ways. 

I think it may be truly asserted that hitherto the result 



6 



of each new step in science has been not only a shock to 
preconceived notions, but a re-readjustment of the devo- 
tional feelings, and that around a new physical conception 
more adapted to develop those feelings than the old 
support from which they were painfully detached. If 
Darwinism be true, experience will lead us to expect alike 
result from it. 

But not change only, mere progress in physical science 
produces pain in the minds of some good people; and 
that for a reason independent of the one to which I have 
above adverted. The sense of awe and reverence is 
closely connected with the consciousness of ignorance ; 
and when ignorance is supplanted by light, that sense 
often receives a temporary shock. It seems to some 
states of mind more easy to believe a thing to be 
divine, when we know not its mode of production, than 
when we can describe some of its antecedents. But 
these experiences are due to imperfections of the mind, 
not to reason or sound sense. The sense of awe is as 
rightfully awakened by a seen superiority in wisdom as 
it is by a superiority which is inferred only from darkness; 
and even as to mystery and ignorance, this increases 
in proportion to our knowledge, for the more we extend 
the circle of our light, the longer is that circumference 
line which divides light from darkness. Thus they who 
know most see also most of the unknown ; and thus every 
step forward in physical science has been found ulti- 
mately to increase the sense of awe, both from what it 
reveals and from what it leaves unrevealed. 

It has often been said that theologians are always 
opposing the progress of science and always retreating 
before that progress. The statement is not far from the 
truth, but it is, I am sure, to be accounted for by the 



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feelings to which I have adverted, as resulting from the 
change in scientific conceptions, and not by anything in 
the essence of theology itself. 

But to come to the special object of this letter. The 
lengthened period of time which Mr. Darwin requires 
for the operations he suggests is one source of pain to 
many religious minds. It is curious and yet, I think, 
true, that, as a rule, the uneducated religious mind resents 
the introduction of long periods of time. It did so when 
Scrope and Lyell and their school of geologists began to 
make incalculable demands for time in the history of the 
globe's crust ; it did so when the antiquity of man was 
promulgated ; it has done so with Darwinism. 

This feeling has, I think, several roots. One is to be 
found in the Mosaic account of the creation, which was 
long supposed to speak of creation as a definite and 
concluded act at an ascertained and not very remote 
date. Another is to be found in a weakness of imagi- 
nation, a mere incapacity of the mind intelligibly to pass 
across great gulfs of time, so that a divine act performed 
on yonder side of such a gulf seems an unintelligible 
divine act, and therefore not an acceptable one to the 
religious consciousness. It is this feebleness of our 
nature that makes contemporary events, in which never- 
theless we have no personal concern, so much more 
affecting and interesting to us than like events in long- 
past time. A lady of my acquaintance, explaining to 
some rustic neighbours some of the sufferings which 
marked the early history of our faith, was met by the 
remark from a farmer, who was not unmoved by her 
recital, " Well, ma'am, 'tis so long ago, perhaps it never 
happened." This feeling haunts many minds when they 
find the initial act of creation referred to a distance of 



8 



time exceeding their usual habits of computation or 
thought ; and that notwithstanding that the products of 
creation are present around them. 

A third source of this objection to the lengthened 
periods involved in the theory of evolution is found in 
the feeling that the more distant in point of time the 
Divine act is, the more the Divine Being is removed from 
the present and the actual. This is a feeling due, evi- 
dently, to the mechanical conception of the cosmical 
laws, as though God had wound up the world and left it 
to go ; but it is entirely dispelled by that truer concep- 
tion in which we come to know that, however remote the 
initial step may have been, it is only by an ever present 
and sustaining spiritual power that outward things are 
maintained. The religious instinct which Attributes to 
the Divine Being the origin of the world/ cannot with 
any propriety, and does not (when enlightened), decline 
to attribute to Him its daily support ; and when this latter 
thought is equally impressed on the mind, then the long 
periods which scientific men demand cease to shock the 
devout mind, then even nature almost witnesses to the 
timelessness of the Divine Being, and each ancient rock 
and each protracted process of nature proclaim that with 
God a thousand years are but as one day. 

I am often struck with wonder at the contrast between 
the real workings of God as we learn them by a patient, 
honest study of what He has done, and the feverish hasty 
notions of men as to what He will do or ought to do. 
How majestically slow and calm and persevering is often- 
times the Divine mode of action ! The sea eating 
through a rock for thousands and thousands of years, or 
Christianity assailing moral evil during nearly twenty 
centuries with a result which we often fretfully think so 



9 



little, — how different is this from what we should have 
expected, and from what men did expect! The early 
notions of geology were all cataclysmical ; the expec- 
tations of the Apostles were of a very speedy wind- 
ing-up of all things. But still God is true to His own 
nature, — " patiens quia seternus." 

Let me carry a little further this analogy between the 
difficulties of Darwinism and religion, and let me invert 
the celebrated saying of Origen, and assert that if we 
believe God to be the author both of religion and of nature, 
we must expect to find in nature the same difficulties as 
in religion. Surely a man who believes in the Divine 
revelation of God to man cannot doubt that God has 
proceeded in that revelation by a system of development, 
and that through long periods of time. Is not the whole 
history of the Jews a history of the development and 
evolution of more and more truth out of certain small 
seeds ? Do we not see how far David was, in the spirit- 
uality of his conceptions, above Samuel, and even above 
Moses ; how far Isaiah transcended even David ; and 
how far even the degenerate Jews of the period imme- 
diately preceding our Lord had in some branches of 
truth (especially that of immortality) got beyond their 
nobler ancestors ? So, too, Christianity was not un- 
folded all at once. The Holy Spirit was promised to 
unfold the truth to the Apostles, and the whole story 
of the Acts and of St.. Paul's life is one history of the 
evolution of Divine truth. So much will I say as to the 
race, when much more might be said; and is not the 
same true of the individual? What good man doubts 
the difference between the religion of the holy old man 
and of the most holy child ? who doubts that the path 
of the Christian is one of increasing light, — from grace 



10 



to grace, from one step in holiness to another? In short, 
if we believe that God regulates the religious life of the 
race and of the individual, we cannot doubt but that, in 
concerns of the highest moment, He does proceed on 
a plan of development through long periods of time. 
" The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard- 
seed." 

I have observed that Mr. Darwin is felt to make too large 
demands on the past. It is felt also that he makes too 
much of the present. For one objection to his views may 
perhaps be fairly stated something in this way: — "The idea 
of creation is a very lofty and grand one ; it is immeasur- 
ably lowered and vulgarized by the Darwinian scheme ; 
to suppose that we almost see in the various forms of our 
brambles or our willows the process of the creation of 
new species is a far lower conception of creation than 
that which theology and the devout consciousness demand. 
The present order of Nature is one of continued existence, 
not of creation, which belonged to a more august past." 

There lurks in this objection a confusion between two 
notions essentially distinct, — the creation of things, i.e., 
of something out of nothing, and the production or 
creation of those peculiar forms which characterize and 
separate organisms from one another. With creation, in 
the true sense of that word, neither Darwinism nor any 
other science of which I have any inkling has anything to 
do. To it, it has nothing to say. Darwinism assumes 
something as existing, nay, it demands life as existing, 
and a complex order of things around that life, so that 
variations of the form in which that life appears are 
capable of being divided into those which are more and 
those which are less adapted to such surrounding condi- 
tions. It is true that it demands very little for its 



11 



starting-point, but then it makes great demands through- 
out the course of its history. There is no difference 
between the sum of the creative force and wisdom 
required by the theory of development, and that re- 
quired by the popular notion of what I may call an 
out-of-hand creation, but the force and wisdom are 
differently distributed ; in the popular notion they are all 
expended at the first step ; in Darwinism the first step 
demands little, the subsequent steps demand the large 
balance. 

And why should not the development of new forms be 
a part of the present history of the globe ? No man with 
his eyes about him can doubt that the earth is undergoing 
perpetual changes in its crust. Mountains are cast up, 
and rocks wear away, and beds are deposited in seas and 
lakes j the work of creation, so far as regards the form of 
the earth, is still in progress. Why should not a like 
change and a like work of creation be going forward 
with those animal and vegetable forms which live on 
those changing rocks, and islands, and continents ? 

It is a common error of men to think little of the 
present as regards its dignity, much of the past and of 
the future ; and this error clings to religious as well as to 
other minds. The present is so common- place, so mono- 
tonous, so dull ; the past, foreshortened through its long 
vistas, seems so august, — the future, so full of possibility, 
that it is hard to believe that 

" This time is equal to all time that's past 
Of like extent, nor needs to hide its face 
Before the future." 

Hence we regard the Apostolic times with such a fond 
affection, hence many look forward to the millennium 



12 



with so much hope, forgetting that the kingdom of God 
is within us and around us in this vulgar present ; and 
hence also, I suspect, that many a religious mind views 
with dislike the notion that the work of creation is now 
in any sense in progress. But the dislike is merely 
notional, and has no basis in sound sense or religion. 

But to return to the idea of creation. In what sense 
does the most rigid believer in creation think that the 
world was created by God without the intervention of 
natural agencies ? Certainly he does not believe that 
the world as it is now was thus created ; he believes that 
the rivers and seas have changed their courses and their 
boundaries; he believes that the actual creatures and 
plants which are now living upon the earth were not thus 
created, but have been evolved in a certain order and by 
certain laws which we call the laws of generation or 
descent ; he does not believe that the dog or the pigeon, 
the cabbage or the grape, were thus created in all the 
varieties in which they now exist, but that these varieties 
have been evolved according to certain laws, which we 
may call the laws of variation. It must be admitted, 
then, that the original act of creation was the creation of 
beings with a capacity for carrying on in their turn the 
work of creation, including the production of new forms. 
It follows that the difference between the Darwinian 
and the anti-Darwinian is far less in this respect than the 
latter supposes. 

Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the first chapter of 
Genesis in nowise asserts a creation of the sort which 
many good people seem to think of, viz., that the 
Almighty created the plants and animals as they are, 
acting directly and without instrument in the awful 
solitude of His own Being, unobscured by the presence 



13 



of any created objects or of any laws which regulate the 
existence of such objects. On the contrary, the biblical 
account is twofold, — (1) of an absolute creation of some- 
thing out of nothing, and (2) of the gradual creation of 
order and form, and then of the subsequent creation of the 
plants and animals. Their origin is distinctly attributed 
to pre-existing created matter acting as the medium of 
creation under the divine permission, — " And God said, 
Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed 
and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose 
seed is in itself upon the earth" [i.e.. capable after the 
creation of reproducing themselves in the method which 
thenceforth was to become the ordinary method of con- 
tinuing the work of creation], "and it was so. And the 
earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after 
his kind, and the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in 
itself after his kind; and God saw that it was good" 
(i.e., the Almighty is represented like a master-artificer, 
as reviewing the work which he has caused to be done 
by others' hands, and though evil was possible in such 
delegated work, finding that in the result the work is 
good) . In like manner, it will be found that the creation 
of animal life is attributed in part to the agency of the 
waters, in part to the agency of the land ; so that nothing 
can be clearer than that the Mosaic account does dis- 
tinctly assert a creation of organic life by and through 
certain natural agencies. 

Not the least offensive part of Mr. Darwin's doctrines 
is that which suggests a close connection, a connection, 
in fact, by way of descent, between ourselves and the 
brutes. It is not difficult to understand this feeling, but 
it is difficult to defend it. Men for the most part regard 
themselves as the special objects — nay, often as the ex- 



14 



elusive objects-, of divine favour — they hold themselves to 
be the elect amongst animals, very much as Calvinists 
regard themselves as the elect amongst mankind. This 
notion runs through a great body of thought on such 
subjects ; the utility of the lower animals to man (a very 
certain fact) is complacently dwelt on ; the utility of man 
to the lower animals is for the most part forgotten. It 
cannot be doubted but that of all animals in this world, 
man is far the most noble; but to look at the whole 
scheme of the world from the human point of view is 
none the less an error, for we may be sure it is a point of 
view very different from that which He occupies without 
whom not a sparrow falls to the ground. But leaving 
the consideration of the self-conceit with which we 
regard our fellow-creatures, let me ask what person who 
ever seriously considered the animal world doubted the 
close relationship of man and the lower animals. Are 
not their senses like our senses, their flesh like our flesh, 
their frames like our frames, their appetites like our 
appetites ? Are we not born into the world as the result 
of similar physical antecedents ? Nay, who ever doubted 
the specially close relationship of man and the monkeys, 
that fact which has embodied itself in the very word 
" monkey " ? And the only difference now introduced 
is this : that whereas it was supposed we were made of 
kin by the original fiat of the Divine Will, now it is sug- 
gested that we were born cousins by the subsequent 
Divine permission. Is this a difference that imperils our 
moral nature or our religious hopes, that produces doubt 
and dismay where before there were faith and hope ? 

Before we cavil at the poor relatives whom Mr. Darwin 
would put on us, let us consider for a moment what 
relatives we are bound to acknowledge. We cannot 



15 



deny our descent from savages, from barbarians of brutal 
lives, abandoned to selfishness, lust, and cruelty, and 
with consciences in the most embryonic state ; we cannot 
deny our close connection with cannibals ; we admit our 
relationship to a yet more revolting class — men who have 
used all the appliances of civilization for the purposes of 
lust and cruelty — men of the type of Caligula or Borgia. 
With such relatives admitted, any great fastidiousness as 
to our genealogy seems out of place. 

But furthermore, it must, I think, be observed that 
this dislike to acknowledge a relationship with the lower 
animals is not an expression of the truest Christian 
feeling, but is opposed to it. For Christianity has 
brought about a more tender regard for them than is 
natural to man, and the deepest Christian feeling and 
the highest Christian philosophy both embrace them 
within their range. "I was early convinced in my 
mind," writes John Woolman, the pioneer of the Aboli- 
tion movement in America, " that true religion consisted 
in an inward life, wherein the heart doth love and 
reverence God the Creator, and learns to exercise true 
justice and goodness, not only toward all men, but also 
toward the brute creatures ; that as the mind was moved 
by an inward principle to love God as an invisible, in- 
comprehensible Being, by the same principle it was 
moved to love Him in all His manifestations in the 
visible world; that as by His breath the flame of life 
was kindled in all animal, sensible creatures, to say 
we love God, as unseen, and at the same time exercise 
cruelty towards the least creature, is a contradiction in 
itself/' And I shall presently cite a passage from 
Bishop Butler, which will show in what light his philo- 
sophy viewed the brute creation. 



16 



But over and above the general objection of our sup- 
posed connection with the lower animals, this connection 
involves two points which naturally shock the feelings of 
many devout men, and require a little more notice. The 
first of these relates to the glorious doctrine of our im- 
mortality. " If we are but the descendants of brutes, 
how can our souls be immortal ? " 

For my own part, I do not hesitate to avow that since 
I first began to think on such things, I have believed 
in the immortality of the souls of the brutes ; and I 
believe it still. But I cannot now venture to enter upon 
this interesting question further than is necessary to my 
present subject. 

There are two views of the immortality of the human 
soul which find favour with different schools of theology ; 
the one is the doctrine that this immortality is a special 
gift of God, — a boon not involved in the mere gift of 
human life, but something over and above this, of God's 
special grace. If this be the true view, it is evident 
that the relationship of man to the lower animals has 
nothing to do with the question of this gift. The 
origin of the recipient cannot affect the fact of a free gift 
being made to him, cannot imply any right to receive 
that which it is assumed that the Almighty bestows or 
withholds at His absolute pleasure. 

The other view of immortality is that it is natural to 
the human soul, or, in other words, that in the gift to 
man of his life is wrapped up the gift of immortality 
If this be the true view, then the likeness between 
the life of man and the life of the animals does truly argue 
for a like result as to the continuance of this latter life ; 
and why not ? To the arguments for the natural immor- 
tality of the human soul which Bishop Butler has 



17 



adopted, this same objection was urged, and it is met by 
him in a passage which deserves the most attentive con- 
sideration : — 

" But it is said/' he writes, <e these observations are 
equally applicable to brutes ; and it is thought an insuper- 
able difficulty that they should be immortal, and by 
consequence capable of everlasting happiness. Now, 
this manner of expression is both invidious and weak ; 
but the thing intended by it is really no difficulty at all, 
either in the way of natural or moral consideration. 
For first, suppose the invidious thing designed in such 
a manner of expression were really implied, as it is not 
in the least, in the natural immortality of brutes, 
namely, that they must arrive at great attainments, 
and become rational and moral agents ; even this would 
be no difficulty, since we know not what latent powers 
and capacities they may be endued with. There was 
once, prior to experience, as great presumption against 
human creatures as there is against the brute creatures 
arriving at that degree of understanding which we have 
in mature age ; for we can trace up our own existence 
to the same original with theirs. And we find it to be a 
general law of nature that creatures endued with capa- 
cities of virtue and religion should be placed in a con- 
dition of being in which they are altogether without 
the use of them for a considerable length of their dura- 
tion, as in infancy and childhood ; and great part of the 
human species go out of the present world before they 
come to the exercise of these capacities in any degree at 
all." (' Analogy/ part i. chap, i.) 

The second point to which I above alluded is of this 
kind. Mr. Darwin has endeavoured to show the rudi- 
ments of the moral nature of man in the brute creation, 



18 



and suggests that our moral natures are but a develop- 
ment of elements to be found in theirs, — that con- 
science is found in embryo in brutes, is found further 
developed in us. " Is morality, then " — this is the 
sort of thing that passes through some devout minds, — 
" is all morality but a matter of the development of 
brain, but a matter of growth ? If so, where are its 
eternal origin and obligation ? what is to become of 
religion and of its objects, God and the soul, if our 
moral natures are but developments ? " 

The answer to this feeling is not far to seek, and in- 
deed is already more than suggested in the remark- 
able passage which I have cited from Butler. It is 
this, that there is a difference between a thing in itself 
and the reception or reflection of the image of the thing. 
Suppose an astronomer to take a rough plate of metal ; 
at first it reflects, but very rudely, the light of heaven ; 
he then polishes one spot in it, and that reflects one 
star ; he proceeds with his work till his mirror by de- 
grees takes in and gives back more and more of the 
starry vault, or to his mirror he may superadd the 
various optical appliances which science can suggest, 
and he has an instrument of power ; but mean- 
while the heavens have not changed, and the de- 
velopment of his mirror or the production of his tele- 
scope has not affected their objective reality or stability. 
Just so is it with man ; the mind of the savage is a 
very rude mirror, the mind of Sir Isaac Newton a 
highly polished one ; the mind of the child is a very small 
one, the mind of the adult man a much larger one. We 
admit, without hesitation, the development of the recep- 
tive faculty, first, in the individual, and secondly, in the 
race; and that without causing any difficulty in our 



19 



minds, for no one doubts the truths of morality or of 
religion because there were and are savages to whom 
they are almost unknown. Mr. Darwin asks us to carry 
the process some steps further back (that is to say from 
savages and infants to the lower animals), and we are 
shocked, and think morality and religion in peril. But 
no new difficulty whatever is introduced by Mr. Darwin's 
demands, and there are those who think they can see 
something to rejoice at in the extension to the lower 
animals of the realms of morality and religion. 

Another head of offence in Mr. Darwin's theory, be- 
yond those already referred to is this, — that it seems to 
displace from its eminence the notion of design in the 
Divine government of the world, and in the doctrine of 
the struggle for existence to introduce a hard-and-fast 
and somewhat cruel general law. 

But this, if a difficulty at all, is not a new one. The 
existence of what we call general laws, — that is, series of 
facts, some of which press hardly and, as it seems, 
harshly on individuals, is a long-ago ascertained fact, — 
and though it may be a very different result from what 
we should have expected a priori, it is thought by no 
devout mind to be an insuperable difficulty, and the 
point to which our attention is rightly drawn is the 
beneficence of the general law in its general results. 
Now, tested in this way, Mr. Darwin's law of natural 
selection is a very striking illustration of this character 
of the general laws of the Divine government, because 
what he has described to us is a continuously acting and 
self-acting machinery, by which nature is always tending 
to produce forms more and more exactly fitted to the 
circumstances for which they are intended; so that no more 
remarkable instance of design in a law or of an abiding 
tendency towards perfection can possibly be conceived. 



20 



The terrible facts of nature are not new, and for them, 
Mr. Darwin is not responsible. The beasts and birds of 
prey, with all their awfully beautiful contrivances to 
produce suffering and death ; the selfish eagerness with 
which each creature struggles for its own existence, though 
to the destruction of others ; the odious instincts and 
habits which exist in some animals, such as the young 
cuckoo, which ejects its foster-brothers, the ants, which 
make slaves, the larvae of ichneumonidae, which feed on 
the live bodies of caterpillars, — these and many other 
facts in nature are difficult to explain, and often raise in 
one's mind questions like that which Blake expressed in 
his wonderful little poem to the Tiger, — 

" Did He who made the lamb make thee? " 

These facts, I repeat, have no more place in Mr. Dar- 
win's than in any other theory of creation \ but to his ima- 
gination (he observes, ( Origin of Species/ p. 291, 4th ed.) 
it is far more satisfactory to look on instincts of the class 
to which I have referred, " not as specially endowed or 
created instincts, but as small consequences of one general 
law, leading to the advancement of all organic being." 

Like observations apply to another class of facts to 
which Mr. Darwin's theory has called attention, — I mean 
the facts which seem to show an imperfection in the 
adaptation of a given plant or animal to the circum- 
stances in which it is placed. Mr. Darwin thinks that such 
facts are due to the transition which the organism is 
undergoing. Certainly such an explanation, whether 
true or false, is in nowise derogatory to the Divine 
Author. Certainly it does not tend to increase, but 
seeks to diminish the difficulty which such facts naturally 
create in our minds. Certainly it is just that sort of 



21 



explanation, by a reference to general laws, with which 
most good men (who think) are accustomed to recon- 
cile to their minds the imperfections of the moral order 
of things. 

Another doubt yet remains to be encountered. The 
evolutionist seems to many to say, " Give me but the 
smallest organism, and I will show you how from thence 
you have arrived at all the complicated system of created 
beings and at man himself. Give me but the smallest 
spark of consciousness, and I will show how man's moral 
and religious nature has been developed." And there- 
upon a doubt arises of this sort : — " If that is all that a 
Creator is wanted for, do we not almost get rid of Him ? 
If these are all the demands we make from God, shall we 
not soon come to do without Him at all ? " The doubt 
is a vain one : since it is absolutely immaterial, for the 
logical necessity of a Divine Creator, whether the postu- 
late with which you start be much or little; if yon 
demand anything from Him, He must be there to give 
it you, or your whole fabric of evolution fails. Now 
every theory of evolution proceeds upon this, that there 
is something given from which something else can be 
unfolded ; and who gives the first thing, if there be no 
"God ? so that the logical necessity for a first cause stands 
precisely as and where it did. There are two possible 
theories of creation, and two only: the one that the 
world had an author ; the other that the world made itself. 
Both these alternatives have their difficulties ; and yet 
every man must choose the one or the other. But in so 
choosing he will not be helped by the adoption or rejec- 
tion of evolution. For if God made the world, He may 
have done so either out of hand or gradually : if the 
world made itself, it may, for aught I know, have pursued 



22 



either method, — so that Darwinism has not altered the 
problem. Those who believed that there is no necessity 
for a God, and prefer to believe that the world made 
itself, will believe so still ; those who believed that the 
world did not make itself, but had a Divine Author, may 
still rest in their belief untroubled by any new difficulty 
or any new fear. 

The dread lest evolution should remove the necessity 
or lessen our sense of the presence of a God is felt in the 
regions to which that doctrine is newly applied ; it is not 
felt in the regions where the doctrine has long reigned 
undisputed. The imagination is affected by it in the one 
set of instances, it is undisturbed by it in the other. To 
suppose that God did not make the living organisms of 
this present world, because they were evolved from small 
beginnings, is to suppose that God did not make the tree 
because it first appears as a little seed, that He did not 
make the butterfly because it first appears as a grub, 
that He did not make man because he is born a baby. 

But consider a little more carefully what are the 
postulates in such a theory of evolution as that of Mr. 
Darwin. They are (1) something, for evolutionism has 
not yet reached the step of evolving something out of 
nothing, and it will be time enough to consider that 
theory when it is propounded ; (2) something vital, for 
Darwinism does not propose to explain the unfolding of 
life out of dead matter ; (3) the power of reproduction, 
for evolutionism offers no explanation of that delegated 
power of creation ; (4) the power of variation in repro- 
duction, of the laws of which Mr. Darwin confesses pro- 
found ignorance ; and (5) the power of such variations to 
reproduce themselves and to become strengthened by 
accumulation. So that this doctrine requires us to 



23 



assume the great mysteries of creation, of life, of genera- 
tion, and of variation. A man may believe all these 
things to exist without a Divine Author, but such a man 
will as readily do so on any one theory of creation as 
another; whilst a man who thinks that the existence of this 
world, on the old theories of creation, could only be ex- 
plained by the existence of a God, will have no need to 
fear or to hope that he can do without His existence by 
virtue of the theory of evolution. The little that that 
theory seemed to demand of God is found to be all that 
goes to make up the existence of the world. 

To me, I confess, no theory of the universe seems so 
intellectual as that of evolution; no other requires in 
such vast proportions the elements of forethought, fore- 
cast, design, the seeing of the end from the beginning. 
Who can believe that anything is unfolded in fact which 
has not been infolded in thought ? Who can take into 
his hand a seed, and consider the marvellous forces and 
powers wrapped up in that little thing, — consider the 
predestination of which it is the subject, the definite ends 
and aims to which it is directed, separate from those of 
all other seeds, — and not feel something like awe, some- 
thing like conviction that nothing but prescience could 
have created such a thing? And the seed is the type 
and incarnation of the doctrine of evolution. 

And now, Sir, I will conclude. I have endeavoured to 
state fairly and honestly the various objections which I 
believe to be afloat in the minds of many religious people 
to Mr. Darwin's theory. I have tried to consider each one 
candidly, and what I ask my readers to inquire is, not 
whether every difficulty in the way of religion is removed, 
but whether the difficulties which exist in Darwinism 
are not the difficulties which exist in nature itself, and 



24 



which existed in all reasonable theories of creation and of 
nature before Mr. Darwin was thought of. Have we not 
walked up to the spectres, and found them old trees with 
which we are familiar, — ugly enough, if you will, but 
nothing but the old trees ? 

For myself, I may say that there are large parts of 
Mr. Darwin's theory which I accept as, at least, probably 
true ; there are other parts which I reject as unproved 
or as against the weight of evidence. But it is no part 
of my present object either to express or to justify this 
opinion on Darwinism. I have not here inquired whether 
it be true or false, but I have asked whether, if it be 
true, it is terrible to religion. For my own part, I have 
no notion that there can be such a thing. My belief in 
the existence and empire of God is too strong to allow 
me to credit for a moment the existence of anything at 
once true and atheistic. I have no fear whatever of 
further investigations into nature ; I have no fear of true 
science, though I have much of false science and of false 
theology too. I have no fear even of the tendencies of 
modern science. I may read it wrongly (as I know that 
I read it little and ignorantly), but to me its tendencies 
seem towards a sublime spirituality, — towards the belief 
that all matter is but force, and all force is but mind. 

I am, Sir, etc., 

BDW. FRY. 



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